The Beginning

There is so much to say on this first update and I am sure so much more as we continue our travels. Internet is hit or miss in our hotels and not always easy to find on the streets, so I think we may end up skipping around a bit.
Despite our bumpy beginning things have gone quite well. Our flight from DC to Amsterdam was very pleasant and quite smooth. We landed early in the morning and had a 4 hour layover so we decided to head out into downtown Amsterdam to have some breakfast. It was early, cold, and a little rainy so we ducked into a nice place for some breakfast. However, considering it was 2am for our bodies, we weren't quite hungry. After a nice slow-paced, jet-lagged stroll around Amsterdam we headed back to the airport for Portugal. After finding our hotel and taking a shower, we realized that we were slowly burning down our hotel room! The converter Jason bought to supplement mine seemed to be defective. All I kept asking is "What is that smell?" It was the converter melting and smoking. If we hadn't realized it, I am sure we would have gone to explore the city and returned to a charred hotel. That would have been quite an awful start to the trip. We did spend the rest of the day exploring main parts of the city and headed into the Bario Alta district for some drinks. The Bario Alta, which we would later find, doesn't really open up until 7pm, it is certainly where the night life lives. During our nightime exploring we decided to drive up the coast in the morning and come back to Lisbon later, which is what we did.
After some much needed sleep we threw our stuff in the car and headed up the coast. We drove for a few hours, mainly because we kept ending up on the wrong freeway, but ended at a small surf town called Peniche which is about 100 kilometers north of Lisbon. We had some lunch, took some pictures of the cliffs and surf and realized that there was 8-10 foot waves with offshore winds - which in surfing terms means "pretty good". So we headed out to find Jason a board and a wetsuit, got a hotel room and hit the beach. We both had a good time, Jason surfing and me taking pictures. It was a fun day and ended at a small pub for pizza and beer (which is really cheap in Portugal).
In the morning we enjoyed the brisk spring morning and went out for another surf session, but the winds had changed direction and there were no waves. Sorry Jason. We drove around enjoying the small town of Peniche, returned the surf board, and made our way back to Lisbon. On our way back we decided to stop at the train station to see if we when we could reserve an overnight train into Madrid. Apparently there was room that evening and we said - ok! Let's go Spain!! We truly enjoyed the rest of our day in Libson, and Portugal for that matter. We sat and enjoyed the ambiance of the day life in the commercial district, had some lunch, stopped in a few (many) cafes, enjoyed some cervejas and took in all that we could. Before catching our 10:30pm train to Madrid we stopped for dinner at a place called Sul, meaning South, for a cook your own meat dinner. (A MUST SEE FOR ANYONE VISITING LISBON.) We had stumbled across this place during our first evening in Lisbon and were pleasantly smothered with the amazing smell of the grill. But at that point, we had already eaten dinner, so we vowed to go back as soon as we could. Dinner was amazing and followed by a few drinks in the area before heading to the train station. Jason and I are both convicned that is much more to be seen of Portugal, but also feel that even if we were to spend a whole month here, there would still be more to see.
I have left out a lot of details about this portion of the trip, mainly due to time constraints and internet availability. I hope to share more with all of you later. We did arrive in Spain yesterday, but I think this is enough for this blog entry. I hope to organize my Espana entry a little better and with a bit more details. Sorry for the grammar and typos.